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Uncle Sam's Neighborhood: Canada's Experience with North American Governance

Panel Discussion and Book Launch for Stephen Clarkson's latest book Uncle Sam and Us: Globalization, Neoconservatism, and the Canadian State

Mar 31, 2003

Of the countries coping with globalization, Canada has had the longest, most intense, and deepest experience. Its exposure to forces of economic, social, and cultural integration with the United States intensified under the free trade agreement negotiated in the late 1980s. With NAFTA, the United States formalized in 1994 its economic links with both of its immediate neighbors, which have become its two largest markets. Some analysts have criticized NAFTA for not creating institutions to manage the increasingly integrated trade relationship and ensuing border-management issues. Others note that the recent positions of Canada and Mexico regarding war in Iraq show more diplomatic autonomy than might have been expected. How much control Canada and Mexico have retained over the direction of various economic sectors remains an open question. With homeland security displacing continental integration as the United States' policy priority, Canada's experience with North American governance now takes on a new urgency.

Please join us for a discussion of governance in North America and Canada's and Mexico's place with respect to their much larger and imposing neighbor.